Here, here. If I hear one more time it's Obama's job to 'fix the economy' (or Bush's for that matter, I don't care) I think I'll puke.

Guess I'll be puking a lot.

Not really, anymore. I think that's the old school definition.

Now it's more an indicator on a company's balance sheet of how much it has overpaid for something, or overvalued something. For example, if they have paid huge dot-com money for some new start up, but the financials of that start up are nowhere near the value the company paid for it, the difference must be put on the acquiring company's balance sheet as goodwill. Because balance sheets always have to net out to 0, when you pay more for something than it's worth, they have to put something in there to balance it out. Goodwill.

So, I've always looked at it as a negative.

thank you for your crisp analysis.

Your statement is pretty much the whole point of this article, no?

I was always taught we are a republic because the Constitution serves as a check on the elected representatives. That is, let's say they wanted to vote to allow racial discrimination, they couldn't do it (anymore), because the constitution says so. It is true that they have the power to change the Constitution, but that's really a different matter. That's not about passing a law, but about changing our entire form of government, or making modifications to the form (via amendment).

Unless they can even prove it works in the Northeast corridor, where it most likely has the most benefit, why bother with anything else?

It's not exactly high speed rail. It's better than regular speed. But not dramatically. I think there are all sorts of right-of-way issues. Unless the country says: "I don't care what these issues are, just make them go away, and make this work", I don't think we should spend another penny.

I haven't thought about this too much but what if they took out some seats and charged more. would you pay?

Let's say it costs $500 for each passenger retail for some flight. Let's say there are 25 rows of 6 seats each (150 passengers). That's 75,000 of revenue.

Now, let's say you take out 5 rows, or 30 seats. That would take a 33" pitch up to something like 40". it would also reduce revenue to 60,000. To get back to the 75,000, the passengers would have to pay 625.

I'd pay it in a heart beat.

Of course, you'd have to ensure all airlines did it, or else no one would. So, let's require 40" seat pitch for all airlines.

It was all to just get a start. They knew they couldn't build them cheap, but they wanted to get started. So why not build them where price is almost no object.

Seems like a decent idea. At least it's more realistic than saying they are going to take over the world.